A King in Hiding (12 page)

At the time I put the emphasis on chess as a sport. I know it's an idea that tends to raise a smile, but chess – sitting as it does at the interface of games, science and culture – is also a sport. In France it falls under the remit of the Ministry of Sport, moreover. To play chess you need to be fit both physically and mentally and to train regularly. Chess tournaments work like other sports competitions, with championships, rankings, trainers and referees. And if anyone objects that it's not very physical, I would remind them that rifle shooting from a prone position is an Olympic discipline. And I'd add that, like footballers and tennis players, great chess players give up competitive playing around the age of 40, rather than struggling to continue to play at an international level.

With Fahim, therefore, I insisted that he should adopt the regime of an athlete, with plenty of sleep (even if a healthy diet wasn't always possible) and a competitive stance: not slumped in his chair, but upright, chest out and arms crossed on the table to make his presence felt to his opponent. I hoped this would help him to rediscover the dynamic of the game, his will to attack and his will to win. His will to play.

That winter I go on the school ski trip. Since I don't have any skiing kit, everyone chips in, at school, at the club and at the hostel. In the end, by the time we set off my bag is the biggest of all of them. It's a long journey. The peculiar smell in the train carriage gives me a headache. It's like being in a car, only with a different smell. Every journey is a bad memory.

It's late in the evening when we get to the chalet. In our room we laugh and shout and make a noise late into the night. The others can't sleep and Céline tells us off.

In the morning, some of the others sail effortlessly down the pistes, while I manage to get my skis on and try to look as if I know what I'm doing. But my feet slip from under me, my legs fly off in all directions and there's no way I can stay upright. Luckily the others in my group are just as bad, and we all take turns to fall flat on our faces. I can't stop laughing, especially when a boy I can't stand comes over and tries to act all cool but ends up in a heap at my feet. When it comes to my turn to show what I can do I really try hard: the instructor is nice and I want to impress her. I quickly change my mind about snow and fix on a goal: I'm going to go back with my
flocon
, my first ski qualification.

At the end of the trip I don't want to leave – unlike some of the others, who've cried all the time as they're so desperate to see their mothers again. I never cry about my mother, even when I'm feeling really miserable because I miss her so much. There's no point: it won't make her suddenly appear. But God knows how much I want to see her, to tell her about everything. About skiing. About tournaments. About all the rest. I imagine her putting her arms around me and telling me I've done well.

Sometimes we talk on the phone, always in a rush, with just time to say:

‘How are you?'

‘Where are you?'

‘Are you eating properly?'

‘Are you sleeping well?'

Sometimes she passes the phone to Jhorna or Fahad so that I can hear their voices. We tell each other we're fine. And that's it. Jhorna and I are like strangers now. And I don't know Fahad at all. When I left he was still a baby and slept all the time. I don't know anything about him. Who is he? What does he think about? What does he dream about? And what does he make of this big brother who he's never seen?

The telephone is a link that tells us that we're all still alive. Every time, my mother starts to cry and I cut the call short and hang up. I tell myself it's because calls are expensive.

Letters are another link. I can still read Bengali, but I can't write it any more. So I make do with reading the letters my mother sends, letters in which she says the same things over and over again: I'm well, everything's fine, everyone's well, you mustn't worry about us, eat properly my son, sleep well, look after yourself. She doesn't tell us that she's run out of money, that she's in debt, that she's moved a long way out of the centre of Dhaka. She just says that everything's fine. And I believe her.

For a while now these links have been broken. My father doesn't show me her letters any more and stops calling her when I'm there. He can see it's too painful for me. And I've started to forget her face. When I'm alone I concentrate hard and try to picture her, but she's gone. I don't even have any photos to help call back her memory.

Sometimes I blame my father for taking me so far away from my mother. I blame my mother for letting me go. But mostly I blame myself. Everything that's happened is my fault: if I hadn't loved chess so much my father wouldn't have been forced to take me and run away.

Then I dream that I raise a regiment to fight the bad people who forced us to leave. I conquer India with a small force, then with a more powerful army I conquer the whole of Asia, then Europe and last of all China, because there are so many people in China. With all the people of Asia and Europe and China behind me, I confront my enemies. I make them take off their black masks and show their faces. I threaten them the way they threatened me. But I wouldn't hurt their wives. Or their children.

Then I become president, and there is a statue of me at the North Pole with the inscription ‘Fahim the King'. I build an enormous palace of gold and diamonds. I set off with my army to fetch my family, and when I find my mother …

The ski trip is over. The journey back takes ages. The others are impatient to get home. I'm just scared. What if my father hasn't managed to phone the helpline? What if they've made us move to a different hotel? What if my father doesn't come to collect me? What if I never find him again?

Luckily he's there to meet me. But after that I'm always afraid of losing him. Of losing him as well.

XP
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After the tribunal's decision, Nura explored every avenue and exhausted every possibility for staying in France, trying to obtain a family residence permit and then a work residence permit, and trailing from the Préfecture at Créteil to the administrative tribunal at Melun, the administrative court of appeal in Paris, and back again.

He had worked out that this was an area in which I was incapable of offering him any effective help: I often say that in life I can only count up to eight and read up to the letter H – just enough to identify the squares on a chessboard. Luckily he found a valuable source of help in Hélène, president of the chess club and a petite bundle of energy. You couldn't help but admire their tenacity and determination. At every step of the way new obstacles were thrown in their path: making appointments, collecting files, filling in forms, filling in more forms because they'd changed colour, writing letters, telling their story, proving they had integrated, demonstrating how hard Fahim was working at school, showing his good results and his successes at chess, and sending for documents from Bangladesh and having them photocopied and translated, with all the expenditure this implied in terms of both energy and money.

Each new attempt was met with refusal and ended with a new order to leave French soil. The responses of the authorities were Kafkaesque. At different times, Nura was told to supply a long-stay visa, proof of his address, a statement of child allowance payments and even pay slips – all of which he didn't have precisely because of his irregular position in France. And how many times was he asked, above all, to supply proof of the threats to which Fahim had been subject in Bangladesh? How he regretted not having kept that anonymous letter that he had received in Bangladesh!

On several occasions their file was lost. In Bangladesh, civil status consists only of two forenames, with no family name. Which of these two names should be used as identification, the first or the second? Following an ingenious combination of the forenames of Fahim and Nura in the national register of aliens – to which only the bureaucrats held the key – their file was lost for ever. So they had to go back to the beginning again.

As one rejection followed another, so Nura underwent a great change. He never smiled any more, and his complexion faded from its handsome warm tone to a dull grey. The man who had been preoccupied but active now sank deeper into depression with each passing day. Helpless, overwhelmed, broken and close to being destroyed, he was crumbling away. In his place he was leaving a ghost.

My father still believes in miracles. He sees a television commercial: ‘To know your future, call our clairvoyant on 0800 …' He wants me to make the call. I try to dissuade him, but nothing will change his mind: he wants to know if we'll get our visas soon. I dial the number and wait, and wait. After many long minutes the line goes dead. The credit on his mobile has run out. Our answer will have to wait for another day.